Missouri is part of a concerning nationwide trend of fake threats

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Large institutions, particularly college campuses, are seeing a nationwide trend of fake threats.

The latest occurred on Tuesday night at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. Bradley police say they received a call at 7:22 p.m. about a bomb threat in the school's Business and Engineering Convergence Center. 

Central Missouri has seen its own false alarms, including one earlier this month. On April 7 a large police presence responded to a fake suicide threat at the University of Missouri. 

At Bradley, a lockdown was issued for the entire campus and nearby residents were also advised to stay indoors. An agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was on the scene as well as members of the Peoria Police Department SWAT team, explosive ordinance disposal team, special investigations, a negotiator and K-9 units. After a thorough sweep conducted by police, it was determined that the call was a false bomb threat. 

The bomb threat created stress and confusion among Bradley students and staff. Many who were trapped in classrooms during the lockdown had no idea what was going on.

"We didn’t know anything and so we found out through outside sources," Cameron Davenport a sophomore at said. "It was pretty stressful because we got the intruder alert and so my first initial reaction is definitely like an active shooter situation."

"Honestly I was kind of relieved to find out it was a bomb threat because the first thing that popped into my head was active shooter and to me that’s more scary than a bomb threat," he added.

Micheal Anderson, who was trapped in the building that the bomb threat was called to say he also had no idea what was going on.

"I didn't know if it was a shooter, if it was a bomb threat it could have literally been a tornado warning."

The confusion caused by fake bomb threats is one of the many issues that large institutions like colleges are facing when situations like this occur. While the limited information for students is frustrating the vague details are by design. Uriah Orland, MU's the Associate Director of the MU News Bureau explained why college campuses are hesitant to send out too much information to students during our investigation into why MUPD did not send out a campus notification when there was a heavy police presence on campus during the fake suicide call in early April.

"We don’t want to put out so many alerts that the campus community becomes numb to alerts and starts to ignore them and such so we want them to take them seriously," Orland said.

According to the ATF there has been a 33 percent increase in bomb threats to schools since 2014. however these threats have not just been limited to schools. Earlier this month a suspicious envelope was received at the Broadway Building mailroom in Jefferson City. Workers were forced to clear the scene but the envelope was determined to be not toxic.  

On Tuesday a suspicious envelope was sent to the Missouri Supreme Court causing firetrucks and police officers to rush to the scene. State officials later said testing showed a small amount of an "illegal substance" in the envelope.

More testing will be conducted, the state says.